What I Read in 2010

So 2010 has come and gone already. Over the past 3 years, I’ve been in the habit of recording the names of all the books I read through to the end, with the aim of getting through at least 50 books a year. I read 59 in 2008, 47 in 2009 and now 55 in 2010, which pretty much means I average a book a week. I love reading, but I find that a lot of my leisure time gets eaten up by PC gaming (recently Starcraft 2, Civilisation 5, Killing Floor). Another thing is that I start a lot of books but don’t finish them. I’d estimate that I started another 20-30 books in 2010. I’ve got a ‘Books Left to Read in 2010’ list that has 37 titles on it – all are books I acquired in 2009/10.

The bulk of my reading in 2010 was dominated by two names: Philip K Dick and Harry Crews. I re-read and reviewed around a dozen PKD books earlier this year, and some of these reviews are slated to appear in SF Commentary 82 in the not-too-distant future. I finished reading Crews’ entire opus, which the exception of This Thing Don’t Lead to Heaven, which I’m still not paying well over $100 for. I read and enjoyed several Australian small press books, mainly published by Twelfth Planet Press. And I finally got into Irvine Welsh this year.

My favourite book of 2010 was Sprawl from Twelfth Planet Press. Full list below.